How did the Chinese Valentine's Day come about? What are the customs of Qixi Festival in different places?
China is a vast country with rich resources and a long history of traditional culture. Whenever traditional festivals are celebrated, the customs and cultures of different places are different, and this is especially true for the upcoming Chinese Valentine's Day. So how did the Chinese Valentine's Day come about? What are the customs of Qixi Festival in different places? Follow the editor to have a sneak peek. Many people ask, what day is the Chinese Valentine's Day? Mr. Shui Mo tells you that the Chinese Valentine's Day is on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar every year. This day is called the Chinese Valentine's Day.How did the Chinese Valentine's Day come about?"The thin clouds are playing tricks, the flying stars are conveying hatred, the Milky Way is far away in the dark. When the golden wind and jade dew meet, it is better than countless things in the world. Love is tender as water, and the good time is like a dream. I can't bear to look back at the magpie bridge on the way home! If the love is long-lasting, why should it be day and night?" A famous poem "Magpie Bridge Fairy: Thin Clouds Playing Skills" brings us into the touching love myth of the meeting of Cowherd and Weaver Girl, but in fact, Chinese Valentine's Day is not a festival named after the love story of Cowherd and Weaver Girl.The Chinese Valentine's Day on May 20, 2006 was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list as one of the first traditional festivals in Chinese cultural history. It is also known as the Qiqiao Festival or the Seventh Sisters' Birthday. This festival originated in the Han Dynasty. According to legend, women in the Han Dynasty would wear their most beautiful new clothes on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar and have a competition in their gardens to see who was more dexterous. Girls who wanted to win would also worship the Vega star to gain more luck in being dexterous. Therefore, the earliest Chinese Valentine's Day was just a festival for folk women to reflect their virtue of loving labor and worship the power of nature. Later, the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl was gradually added, and with the massive hype from modern businesses and media, it evolved into today's Chinese Valentine's Day! What are the customs of Qixi Festival in different places?The Qiqiao Festival in Guangzhou is unique. Before the festival arrives, the girls prepare various ingenious little toys with colored paper, straw, string, etc. They also put grain seeds and mung beans in small boxes and soak them in water to make them germinate. When the sprouts grow to more than two inches long, they are used to worship gods, which are called "worshiping the immortals" and "worshiping the gods". From the evening of the sixth to the evening of the seventh, for two consecutive nights, the girls put on new clothes and new jewelry. After everything is arranged, they burn incense and light candles, kneel down and worship the starry sky, which is called "welcoming the immortals". They have to worship seven times from the third to the fifth watch.In Fujian, people let the Weaver Girl appreciate and taste fruits during the Chinese Valentine's Day in order to ask her to bless them with a good harvest in the coming year. The offerings include tea, wine, fresh fruits, five kinds of seeds (longan, red dates, hazelnuts, peanuts, melon seeds), fresh flowers, pollen used by women for makeup, and an incense burner. Generally, after fasting and bathing, everyone takes turns to burn incense and worship in front of the altar, praying silently. Women not only beg for dexterity, but also beg for children, longevity, beauty and love. Afterwards, everyone ate fruits, drank tea and chatted while playing the Qiqiao game. There are two types of Qiqiao games: one is "Buqiao", which is to use divination tools to ask yourself whether you are clever or stupid; the other is a competition of cleverness, that is, whoever threads the needle faster is the winner, and the slowest is called the "loser". The "loser" has to give a small gift prepared in advance to the winner. The activities of begging for skills in Jinan, Huimin, Gaoqing and other places in Shandong are very simple. They just display melons and fruits to beg for skills. If there are spiders weaving webs on the melons and fruits, it means that the skills begged for are obtained. However, the custom of eating Qiaoqiao rice and begging for skills in Juancheng, Caoxian, Pingyuan and other places is very interesting: seven good girls collect grains and vegetables to make dumplings, and put a copper coin, a needle and a red date into three dumplings respectively. After the begging for skills, they gather together to eat dumplings. It is said that those who eat the money will be blessed, those who eat the needle will be dexterous, and those who eat the date will get married early. People in Zhucheng, Tengxian and Zouxian call the rain on the Chinese Valentine's Day "love rain" or "love tears" because it is caused by the meeting of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. It is said in Jiaodong, southwestern Shandong and other places that there are very few magpies on this day because they all go to the sky to build the magpie bridge. Similar customs of begging for skills are still practiced in various parts of Zhejiang today. In places like Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and other places, various small objects are made with flour on this day, fried in oil and called "Qiaoguo". Qiaoguo, lotus pods, white lotus roots, red water chestnuts and other objects are displayed in the courtyard at night. Girls thread needles facing the moon in the hope that the Weaver Girl will grant them skills, or they catch a spider and put it in a box. If the spider has made a web when the box is opened the next day, it is considered a blessing. In the countryside of Shaoxing, many young girls would secretly hide under the sheds of lush pumpkins on this night. If they could hear the whispers of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl when they met in the dead of night, the girl who was about to get married would be able to obtain this everlasting love for a thousand years. In Jinhua, Zhejiang, every family kills a chicken on July 7th, meaning that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet on that night, and if there is no rooster to announce the dawn, they will never be separated. In western Guangxi, it is said that on the morning of July 7, fairies will come down to earth to take a bath. Drinking their bath water can ward off evil spirits, cure diseases and prolong life. This water is called "Shuangqi Water". When the cockcrows on this day, people rush to the river to fetch water. After getting it back, they put it in new jars for future use. In addition to worshipping the Seventh Mother on the Chinese Valentine's Day in Taiwan, people often also prepare a small bowl of oily rice and bring it to the room to worship the "bed mother". The two should have similar meanings. Childbirth and child-rearing are irreplaceable responsibilities of women, so these gods are all female gods; a close connection is formed between female gods and female believers, which resolves the anxiety and fear of women when assuming motherhood. "Bed Mother" is the patron saint of children. July 7th is Bed Mother's birthday. Families with children will worship Bed Mother beside the child's bed in the evening of that day. Offerings include: oil rice, chicken wine (or sesame oil chicken), burning "four-sided gold" and "bed mother's clothes". The worship of Bed Mother should not be too long, unlike the usual worship which requires three rounds of wine. After the offerings are arranged and the incense is lit, you can prepare to burn "four-sided gold" and "bed mother's clothes". After burning, you can remove the offerings, hoping that the child will grow up quickly. You cannot worship too long, for fear that Bed Mother will spoil the child and make him stay in bed. There is a Qixi Xiangqiao meeting in Gudoujing Village, Tanghui Township, Jiaxing, Jiangsu. Every year on the Chinese Valentine's Day, people come to participate and build incense bridges. The so-called incense bridge is a bridge about four to five meters long and half a meter wide, built with various thick and long wrapped incense (stick incense wrapped in paper). It is equipped with railings and decorated with flowers made of five-colored threads on the railings. At night, people offer sacrifices to the two stars, praying for blessings and good fortune, and then burn the incense bridge, symbolizing that the two stars have walked across the incense bridge and met each other happily. This Xiang Bridge is derived from the legendary Magpie Bridge. This record can be found in Hunan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas. For example, the "You County Chronicles" of Xiangtan area in Hunan Province recorded: "On July 7th, women picked cypress leaves and peach branches, boiled them into soup and washed their hair." The famous prose writer Qi Jun (from Zhejiang) also mentioned in his "Ji" that his mother, aunts, and other female relatives all washed their hair on the Qixi Festival. This custom is probably related to the belief in "holy water" on the Qixi Festival. People believe that drawing spring water or river water on the Qixi Festival is like drawing water from the Milky Way, which has the sacred power of purification. In some places, it is simply called "Holy Water of Tiansun (i.e. Weaver Girl)". Therefore, it has special meaning for women to wash their hair on this day, which means that using the holy water from the Milky Way to cleanse their hair will surely gain the blessing of the Goddess of Weaving. There is also a popular custom of collecting dew in washbasins. Legend has it that the dew on the Chinese Valentine's Day are the tears of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl when they met. If you smear the dew on your eyes and hands, it can make your eyesight clear and your hands quick. |
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